| SEPTEMBER 17 - BIRTHS | |
| Oswald Garrison "Mike" Villard Jr | |
(source) |
 Born 17
Sep 1916; died 7 Jan 2004.
American electronics engineer who developed over-the-horizon radar (a way to detect objects out of direct sight by bouncing radar off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer in the upper atmosphere) so radar could peer around the Earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away. His interest in electricity began with a copy of Harper's Electricity Book for Boys. At age 12, he put together a radio from a kit. During WW II, he researched countermeasures to protect Allied forces against enemy radio and radar devices. He made pioneering studies of radar jamming. In 1947, he designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel, such as a telephone conversation |
| Merrill W. Chase | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1905; died 5 Jan 2004
American immunologist who helped redefine the fundamental nature of the immune system. In the early 1940's, he made the groundbreaking discovery that white blood cells orchestrated the body's immune response. In his key experiment, he succeeded in transferring immunity against the tuberculosis organism by transferring white blood cells between guinea pigs. By the 1950's, using improved cell culture techniques, other experimenters identified lymphocyte cells (about 25% of white blood cells) as responsible for immunity, and later found different types. T cells are derived from the thymus mediated cellular immunity, and B cells from the bursa of Fabricius (an outgrowth of the cloaca in birds).« |
| Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1857; died 19 Sep 1935.
Russian pioneer space theorist who, while a provincial Russian schoolteacher, worked out many of the principles of space travel. In 1883, he noted that vehicle in space would travel in the opposite direction to gas that it emitted, and was the first to seriously propose this method propulsion in space travel. He wrote various papers, including the 1903 article "Exploration of Space with Reactive Devices." The engineering equations he derived included parameters such as specific impulse, thrust coefficient and area ratio. He established that the most efficient chemical combination would be that of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. He was later recognized by the Soviet Union as the "father of cosmonautics." He also built the first wind tunnel.«  Selected
Works of Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, by Konstantin E.
Tsiolkovsky. |
| David Dunbar Buick | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1854; died 6 Mar 1929.
Scottish-born American inventor and pioneer automobile manufacturer. He invented the more powerful valve-in-head engine and the windshield. Lacking business acumen, he was a manufacturer for only a few years, but Buick's brand name remained after his business was taken over by his financiers. Buick had begun (1884) in the plumbing supply business, and developed a method for bonding enamel to iron in the production of baths and sinks. By 1899, he made internal combustion engines, which led to forming the Buick Manufacturing Company (1902) to manufacture automobiles. After about a year in business, his company was turned over to other businessmen able to expand it. Buick left in 1906 to pursue other interests.« The
Buick: A Complete History, by Terry B. Dunham. |
| Seth Carlo Chandler | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1846; died 31 Dec 1913.
Seth Carlo Chandler, Jr. was an American astronomer best known for his discovery (1884-85) of the Chandler Wobble, a complex movement in the Earth's axis of rotation (now refered to as polar motion) that causes latitude to vary with a period of 14 months. His interests were much wider than this single subject, however, and he made substantial contributions to such diverse areas of astronomy as cataloging and monitoring variable stars, the independent discovery of the nova T Coronae, improving the estimate of the constant of aberration, and computing the orbital parameters of minor planets and comets. His publications totaled more than 200. |
| Bernhard Riemann | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1826; died 20 July 1866.
(Georg Friedrich) Bernhard Riemann was a German mathematician whose work widely influenced geometry and analysis. In addition, his ideas concerning geometry of space had a profound effect on the development of modern theoretical physics and provided the foundation for the concepts and methods used later in relativity theory. He clarified the notion of integral by defining what we now call the Riemann integral. He was an original thinker and a host of methods, theorems and concepts are named after him. Riemann suffered from tuberculosis and he spent his last years in Italy in an attempt to improve his health. |
| Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1806; died 1875.
French neurologist, born in Boulogne, who studied at Douai and Paris. He was first to describe several nervous and muscular disorders and, in developing medical treatment for them, created electrodiagnosis and electrotherapy. In 1858, he was the first to describe locomotor ataxia. In 1862, he mapped 100 facial muscles and pointed out that false, or even half-hearted, smiles involved only muscles of the mouth. But "the sweet emotions of the soul," he said, activate the pars lateralis muscle around the eyes. He first described Tabes dorsalis in 1885, which is also known as Duchenne's disease. |
| John Goodricke | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1764; died 20 Apr 1786.
English astronomer who was the first to notice that some variable stars were periodic. Born a deaf-mute, after a proper education he was able to read lips and to speak. He was the first to calculate the period of Algol to 68 hours and 50 minutes, where the star was changing its brightness by more than a magnitude as seen from Earth. He was also first to correctly propose that the distant sun is periodically occulted by a dark body. John Goodricke was admitted to the Royal Society on 16 April 1786, when 21 years old. He didn't recognized this honour, because he died four days later, in York, by pneumonia. |
| Stephen Hales | |
(source) |
Born 17
Sep 1677; died 4 Jan 1781.
English botanist, physiologist, who pioneered the quantitative experimental approach in plant and animal physiology. He was a clergyman whose work in plant physiology, Vegetable Staticks (1787), included early demonstrations of the importance of air and light in plant growth, and of the role of transpiration in causing upward sap flow. He also measured the rates of growth of shoots and leaves and the pressure roots exert on sap, and he investigated plant respiration. Hales was the first to quantitatively measure blood pressure, measured the capacity of the left ventricle of the heart, and the output of the heart per minute. He invented an artificial ventilator that could convey fresh air into prisons, ships' holds, and granaries. |
| SEPTEMBER 17 - DEATHS | |
| Jean Piaget | |
(source) |
 Died
17 Sep 1980 (born 9 Aug 1896)
Swiss child psychologist and zoologist. By age 15 he was contributing articles on molluscs to journals of zoology, and his doctoral degree (1918) thesis was on the distribution of molluscs in the Valaisian Alps. Thereafter, he turned to researching how mental growth develops in several successive stages from infancy to adulthood - "the embryology of intelligence" - for which he became distinguished. In the journal Science (27 Jun 1958), he summarized that at the age of eleven or twelve "a child becomes capable of certain formal or abstract operations of thought which before were possible only as concrete operations on properties of the immediately present object world. This provides the last of three mental revolutions during development."« The
Psychology of the Child, by Jean Piaget. |
| Friedrich Adolf Paneth | |
(source) |
Died
17 Sep 1958 (born 31 Aug 1887)
Austrian-British chemist who improved methods in the 1920's to isolate and measure the minute amounts of helium (as little as 10-10 cm3) slowly released by traces of radioactive elements in rocks. This enabled determination of both the age of rocks on earth, and also the age of meteorites which implies the age of the solar system, (presently accepted as 4,600 million years). Earlier, he and his friend George Charles de Hevesy introduced radioactive tracer techniques (1912-13). Paneth used radium D as a tracer to measure the solubility of lead salts, then extended the technique to the study of the unstable hydrides of lead and bismuth. He contributed to the study of the stratosphere by determining its composition as a function of altitude up to 45 miles.« Chemistry
and beyond: A selection from the writings of the late F.A. Paneth,
by Fritz Paneth. |
| William Fox Talbot | |
(source) |
Died
17 Sep 1877 (born 11 Feb 1800)
English mathematician, physicist, chemist who invented the negative-positive photographic process. He improved Thomas Wedgewood's discovery (1802) that brushing silver nitrate solution onto paper produces a light-sensitive medium able to record negative images, but Wedgewood was unable to control the darkening. In February 1835, Fox Talbot found that a strong solution of salt fixed the image. Using a camera obscura to focus an image onto his paper to produce a negative, then - by exposing a second sheet of paper to sunlight transmitted through the negative - he was the first to produce a positive picture of which he was able to make further copies at will. His Pencil of Nature (1844) was the first photographically illustrated book. First
Photographs: William Henry Fox Talbot and the Birth of Photography,
by William Henry Fox Talbot, Michael Gray. |
| John Elder | |
(source) |
Died
17 Sep 1869 (born 8 Mar 1824)
Scottish marine engineer who, assisted by W.J.M. Rankine, developed the compound steam marine engine (1854) by dividing the steam expansion into two cylinders, so that each cycled through a smaller range of temperatures and pressures which greatly improved fuel efficiency. The S.S. Brandon sailed in Jul 1854 with their first engine of this type, which used a third less coal than was possible before. Elder continued improve his designs to give even more economy. As a result, his engineering business on the Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland, continued to grow, with over 4,000 workers. Between 1853 and 1867, his firm took out fourteen important patents, including a quadruple-expansion engine (1862). He died at the young age of 45 from liver disease. However, his ship yard remains today as Kvaerner Govan Ltd.« |
| John Kidd | |
(source) |
Died
17 Sep 1851 (born 10 Sep 1775)
English chemist and physician who obtained naphthalene (1819), which name he coined. It was the first of many useful organic chemicals derived from coal tar, the thick black liquid resulting when coal is heated to make coke and gas. In addition to teaching chemistry at Oxford, elected in 1803 as the first Aidrichian professor of chemistry, he later taught minerology and geology. His geology students included William Conybeare, William Buckland and Charles Daubeny. Holding a medical degree, he also taught anatomy (from 1816) and medicine (from 1822). He wrote a pamphlet on the role of science in education. Kidd was the son of a navy captain.« |
| Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu | |
(source) |
Died
17 Sep 1836 (born 12 Apr 1748)
French botanist who developed the principles that served as the foundation of a natural system of plant classification. He was born into a family of eminent botanists from Lyons in France. After graduating from the Jardin du Roi in 1770, he continued to work there. He is remembered for introducing a natural classification system that distinguishes relationships between plants relying a large number of characters, unlike the artificial Linnean system, which uses only a few. He distinguished 15 classes and 100 families, of which 76 remain in botanical nomenclature today. His uncles Antoine, Bernard, and Joseph de Jussieu all made important contributions to botany and his son, Adrien, subsequently continued the family tradition. |
| Abraham-Louis Bréguet | |
(source) |
Died
17 Sep 1823 (born 10 Jan 1747)
Swiss-French horologist and inventor who became the leading French watchmaker of his time because of his artistic as well as technical skill. His innovations included a self-winding or "perpétuelle" watch (1780), the gong spring which decreased the size of repeater watches, and the first anti-shock device or "pare-chute", which improved the reliability of his watches while making them less fragile. In 1775 he founded the Breguet watchmaking firm. After a two year interruption during the French Revolution, he continued business with more inventions. He sold the first modern carriage clock to Bonaparte, and created the tact watch by which time could be read by touch.« |
| SEPTEMBER 17 - EVENTS | |
| Siamese twin separation | |
(source) |
In 1953, at the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana,
Carolyn Anne and Catherine Anne Mouton were the first siamese twins to
be successfully separated by surgery. They were connected at the waist
when born in July 1953. Siamese twins develop from a single fertilized
ovum that has divided imperfectly. |
| L.P. records | |
(source) |
In 1931, very early versions of 33 rpm long-playing records were
first demonstrated at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York by RCA (Radio Corporation
of America). The record players were so expensive that the product flopped.
The first plastic LP records as we know them, did not come out until 1948,
when RCA rival, Columbia, began mass production of the LP. |
| First airplane flight across U.S. | |
(source) |
In 1911, "Cal" (Calbraith Perry) Rogers (1879-1912) took off from Long
Island, NY, on the first coast to coast airplane flight.
When William Randolph Hearst offered a $50,000 prize for the first 30-day
transcontinental flight, Cal Rodgers took up the challenge. He was a slender
motorcycle racer with only limited flying experience (some of it gained
at the Wright School,) using a 35 h.p.Wright EX biplane, named the Vin
Fiz after his commercial sponsor's soft drink. He made thirty stops,
including nineteen crashes, virtually rebuilding the Vin Fiz by
the time he reached Pasadena, California, on Nov 5. During 49 days, he
flew for 82 hours, becoming the first person to complete a transcontinental
flight (though 19 days too late to win the prize). |
| First U.S. airplane fatality | |
(source) |
In 1908, the first U.S. airplane fatality was Thomas Etholen Selfridge
at Fort Meyer, Arlington Heights, Virginia. He was a passenger with Orville
Wright while demonstrating to the army the Wright Flier airplane when
the machine fell 75-ft and crashed into the ground. Wright had installed
new, longer, but not flight-tested propellers only the day before. One
of the propellers had struck one of the wings' vibrating guy wires and
disintegrated. Lieutenant Selfridge, 26 years old, was an army artillery
officer
on special duty with the Balloon Corps. He was taken unconscious to Fort
Myers hospital, where he died that night after an operation for a fractured
skull. An official said that Orville Wright sustained a thigh fracture
and multiple rib fractures.«  [Image
left:
Lt. Selfridge;
right:
The crashed airplane.]
To
Conquer the Air : The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight,
by James Tobin |
| Mercury vapour lamp | |
(USPTO) |
In 1901, the first U.S. patents for a mercury vapour lamp were issued to
inventor Peter Cooper Hewitt of
New York City (Nos. 682,692-99). These eight patents covered the design
of an elongated vacuum tube fitted with a mercury electrode at one end
and an iron electrode at the other end. Light was produced when an electric
current passed through the mercury vapour. However, it was a garish blue-green
colour, lacking any red light. The lamps were subsequently manufactured
by the Cooper Hewitt Electric Company in New York City, in Dec 1902. They
were an important forerunner of today's fluorescent lights.«  |
| Fire sprinkler patent | |
(source) |
In 1872, the first U.S. patent
for an automatic sprinkler system was issued to Phillip W. Pratt, of Abington,
Mass. (No. 131,370). The system was operated by means of a valve to which
cords and fuses were attached. The cords held the valve closed with a spring-loaded
lever. In case of a fire, when the fuses ignited, the cords burned, and
the valve opened releasing a stream of water. Water then flowed through
overhead pivoted pipes which would revolve rapidly, throwing water in all
directions, wetting ceiling, walls and floor. |
| Mont Cenis Tunnel | |
 |
In 1871, the Mont Cenis Tunnel opened, the world's first important mountain
tunnel. The two track railway tunnel through the Alps under Mont Cenis,
united Savoy (north of the mountains) through Switzerland with the rest
of Italy to the south. It was 8 miles long, double any previous tunnel's
length. Work was begun in 1857.
In 1861, after three years of tedious hand-boring eight inches a day into
the Alpine rock face, its builder, French engineer
Germain
Sommeiller, introduced industrial-scale pneumatics in tunnel digging
for the first time. Workers tunnelling from each side met halfway on 26
Dec 1870. The tunnel was inaugurated with the passage of 22 carriages
in 20 minutes. Regular train service began 16 Oct 1871. Mail was sent by
the tunnel beginning 5 Jan 1872, saving 24 hours from the overland route.*« [Image
top:
Mont Cenis Tunnel entrance arch; bottom:
Sommeiller Boring Machines.] |
| Colour printing press | |
(source) |
In 1844, the first U.S. patent was issued for a printing press with different
colours of ink applied in one impression (No. 3,744). The inventor, Thomas
F. Adams of Philadelphia, Pa., called it "polychrome printing." The process
used several ink fountains feeding different colour rollers which operated
in parallel on the same axle, to produce stripes of different colours to
ink corresponding lines of type. |
| Rosetta Stone decyphered | |
(source) |
In 1822, at the French Academie Royale des Inscriptions, Jean-François
Champollion read a paper,
Lettre
a M. Dacier, describing his solution to the mystery of the triple inscriptions
on the Rosetta Stone which had been unearthed July of 1799, by Napoleon’s
army near the Rosetta branch of the Nile. (Baron Joseph Dacier, to whom
he addressed the letter, was Secretary of the Academie.) Champollion's
work to decipher the hieroglyphics had began in 1808. Thomas Young did
some preliminary
fragmentary work, but otherwise it was Champollion's major accomplishment.
In 1823 he gave more details in a series of memoirs read at the Institute,
published the following year as Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des
anciens Egyptiens.« [Image
right: Rosetta Stone (source)] |
| Leeuwenhoek's observation of bacteria | |
 |
In 1683, the Dutch scientist Antonie
van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal
Society reporting his discovery
of microscopic living animalcules (live bacteria). He had made observations
on the plaque between his own teeth, "a little white matter, which is as
thick as if 'twere batter." Looking at these samples with his microscope,
Leeuwenhoek reported how in his own mouth: "I then most always saw, with
great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living
animalcules, very prettily a-moving. The biggest sort. . . had a very strong
and swift motion, and shot through the water (or spittle) like a pike does
through the water. The second sort. . .oft-times spun round like a top.
. . and these were far more in number."
Antonie
Van Leeuwenhoek and His "Little Animals", by Antonie
Van Leeuwenhoek. |
